“The p’o is that ego which still hopes, desires, wishes, and experiences fear and thus lets the life energy (ch’i) flow outward. It corresponds to Geddee’s B-consciousness or to an everyday ego that has not been purified. The work consists in its transformation into an interiorized, spiritual consciousness. This is the “fruit” which is preserved after the destruction of the body in death….
That which our everyday ego thinks, does, feels, etc. throughout the day escapes into the outer world and finally gets lost there. But when something meaningful, which can be recognized by means of a strong emotion, breaks into life, then there is a chance for us to make its archetypal (that is, spiritual) meaning conscious. In this way a piece of something eternal and infinite is realized in our earthly existence, and that means, in a literal sense, that it has become real.
So affects and emotions which belong to the body-soul should not be repressed and “overcome”… One should confront them in oneself and search for the deeper meaning behind their exterior expressions of desiring and willing to act. Usually this confrontation does not end without a struggle, for it is in the nature of affects to seduce us into impulsive actions or to hold us tenaciously in the circumstances placed before us in the outer world. To concentrate instead on the deeper meaning of such impulses requires a conscious decision, a turning back or confrontation with one’s own emotions….This spiritual meaning, however, reveals itself only when one confronts the conflict without reservations. Then there occurs (one cannot make it happen) a transformation that leads to the union of the opposites, and out of that union, the glorified body apparently emerges that survives death and that the alchemists called their “stone.”
(Marie-Louise von Franz, On Dreams & Death, p. 118-119)
Journeying Toward Home 